Month: October 2017

It’s often one of the first things you ask someone when you meet them. “What do you do?” or “Where do you work?” Want to know a much more interesting question? Ask them this one. “So Why do you work?” I guarantee their answer will tell you a lot about them and YOUR answer will help you perform up to your potential in life.

A crucial step to living a more fulfilling life is to know your “WHY” before you know your HOW. Lots of people ask HOW to take their real estate business to the next level. There are a million strategies, but if they haven’t answered their WHY first, they’re not going to put those strategies to the best use.

You see, knowing your WHY ultimately makes the HOW so much easier. Encouraging agents to determine their WHY is one of the foundational steps in real estate coaching. Think about it for a second — how effective are you in any project when you’re unsure of what you’re doing? When there’s no “end game” in mind, you feel like you’re floating and your focus, desire and confidence tend to fade away.

So it only makes sense that one of the first steps to success is determining your genuine motivation or drive. To answer the question of “Why do you work?” Of course, the simple answer is to keep a roof over your head, to keep yourself fed and to provide for your family. But let me tell you — that answer SUCKS.

Do you want to simply exist, or do you want to excel?

Looking inward, taking a deep dive and identifying your WHY becomes a much more powerful exercise when you look deeper in search of an answer that is emblematic of who you are and why you’re willing to work so hard every day. Here’s a list of questions to ask yourself, and don’t be afraid to add others that are meaningful to you:

What motivates you?

What are your dreams?

How much money do you want to make?

How many team members do you want to hire?

When do you want to retire?

What do you want for your spouse/significant other?

What kind of future do you want to create and provide for your children?

How much vacation time do you want?

Where do you want to visit?

How do you want to make a difference in the world?

What does your ideal legacy look like?

What do you want to contribute to outside of business?

Don’t answer these questions too quickly. Do some soul searching and provide vivid detail in your responses. Like any goal, the more specifically you define it, the more it’s going to resonate with you. Like any goal, you need to make your WHY visible and public. It might feel uncomfortable, but put it out there. When you share your WHY with others, you up your cadence of accountability.

The reason the “Why do you work?” question tells you a lot about someone is because the more thought they’ve given this topic, chances are the more driven they are and the more committed to their business they are. Those who truly know their WHY are people who align their behaviors with their goals and get their work done, day in and day out. To take it a step further, they’re the type of people who spend most of their time working ON their business, not IN it.

Your WHY is a very powerful thing. Do you know yours? If not, find it. Only then should you start thinking about your HOW.

At Royal LePage RCR Realty, we are huge believers of tracking and measuring everything we do in real estate so we can tell what is working, what is not working and what we are doing well and more importantly what we frankly should just do more of. The second half of the year is about doing more of what works and if you do more of that you obviously like your chances of finishing the year strong. This is the top five activities that work with all the most successful agents we work with.

1) Database – All the most successful agents have at least 28 to 36 organized, planned and systemized activities a year that add value to their past and existing clients. They personally mail them, e mail them e reports, provide complimentary annual reviews of their real estate holdings, host client party events, hand written personal notes, birthday and “houseaversary cards, pop by gifts like ketchup, relish and mustard packs with a tag that says “Thought I would catch up and let you know I relish your real estate referrals and not all agents cut the mustard.” and more. They have a blend and balance of top of mind and give to get activities that continue to propel their repeat and referral business year after year!

2) Open House – There are literally very few activities an agent can do where the clients actually come to them and the agent doesn’t need to go find the client. Agents get to use their strengths as they get to meet the client face to face and engage their audience and the clients determine whether the agent is likeable and someone they can trust. Think about it open house is the rare place agents can use the interpersonal skills to get a client to engage and connect and feel they want to do business with them and why it is always in our fabulous five activity list year after year.

3) Door Knocking – 86% of communication is non-verbal meaning that eye contact, voice inflection, voice tone and body language make up a large portion of non-verbal communication which we are able to utilize going door to door and meeting face to face with the clients. Now you have to go bang on doors and ask everyone “Hi you want to sell your house?” the cold call approach is dead and gone, unfortunately. What in fact works very well is warm call approaches using a Bona Fide buyer, New listing, Recent sale or invitation to your open house approaches. Think about it, what person wouldn’t want to help you find something for a buyer, hear about the latest asking or sale price on their street or be asked to snoop at the neighbors upcoming open house?

4) Geographic Farm – Almost every top agent stands out from the crowd and the way they stand out is being an expert or have a niche at something. Every agent is good at every type of real estate and very few make themselves experts, niched and stand out from the crowd! Being an expert at an area, neighborhood, property type or even a certain demographic will get you further and more recognized as an expert than just being like all the other agents. Top producers strategically pick, work and add value to their geographic farm and within 8-12 months it pays back in spades and if done correctly it always hits the top producers activity success list year after year.

5) Online Leads – This is not the silver bullet but something for a new agent to kick start their career, a veteran to top up their business and keep a bit more consistent and something a top producer uses to feed leads to their associates and increase their volume and leverage. Before anyone even turns this type of activity on, buy, read and study Chris Smith’s book “The Conversion Code” it’s easy to buy and turn the lead machines on but converting the leads is where the money is at! Start at chapter 8 and learn the art of conversion before embarking on the online lead machine.

So there it is, the top five activities that are consistently showing up as the most successful dollar producing activities of hundreds of agents we have had the pleasure of working with. Track, measure and see what your top five are and spend the second half of 2017 doing more of what it is your doing right and is making you money. Finish the year strong and don’t reinvent the wheel and take you and your business off course!